SEWA Cooperative Federation’s work has taken shape over time through close engagement with informal women workers and their collective enterprises. It focuses on strengthening the conditions that allow women worker-led and managed collectives to take root, adapt and endure.
Across different contexts and sectors, women workers collectives face recurring questions. How are leadership roles sustained as enterprises grow? How do these collectives engage with markets that are uneven and volatile? What happens when governance weakens, or when external shocks disrupt work and income? Our work responds to these questions as they emerge in practice.
As a federation, we operate at the intersection of enterprise, institution and movement. We work alongside women leaders from the informal sector to build shared capacity, support cooperative development that engages them with systems which shape how their collectives function. This includes markets, policy environments and broader social protection frameworks.
The focus of our work is not on replicating a single model. It is on accompanying diverse collective journeys—some newly forming, others seeking renewal—while staying grounded in cooperative values and collective decision making.
Each area of our work reflects a different way of engaging with women’s collective enterprises. Together, they form an integrated approach that is responsive to change and rooted in long-term learning.
We strengthen the leadership and governance of informal women workers’ cooperatives through…
Our fellowship is a year-long* leadership journey for elected leaders of informal women workers’ collective…
We work with women’s collectives to strengthen how they engage with markets – locally…
Our policy work grows from decades of practice with women’s cooperatives. We bring collective…
We work with informal women workers to form, sustain, strengthen, and renew cooperatives…
